Monday, April 19, 2010

Looking more at Democratic enthusiasm

Our latest numbers on enthusiasm among Democrats for voting this fall are a good reminder of just how awful it was for the party to have Creigh Deeds and Jon Corzine as its standard bearers last fall.

We find 62% of the party's voters nationally 'very excited' about voting this fall. That's quite a contrast from last fall's races when 38% of Virginia Democrats and 35% of New Jersey Democrats expressed that sentiment about their Governor's races.

I'm not going to say that the races last fall were meaningless as a barometer for this year- certainly they portended good news for the Republicans in 2010. At the same time it's not exactly breaking news that bad candidates lose elections, and what happened in New Jersey and Virginia speaks to that at least as much as the overall mood of the voters.

Democrats should do comparatively a lot better this year than they did in 2009 assuming their candidates generate a little more enthusiasm from the party base than Deeds and Corzine did.

2 comments:

And yet, the Republican advantage on the generic congressional ballot is at a 3-year high among likely voters on Rasmussen and at or near a 60-year high on Gallup. This likely speaks to the Democrats' terrific success at alienating independents and/or convincing more people to register as and identify as Republicans.

Sixty-two percent is pretty scary for Republicans, but Dems are in a sort of double-bind betweem now and November. The more they act like Democrats, the more fired up Republicans and independents get about voting. The less they act like Democrats, the less Dems care about voting in November. If HCR is the last major victory this term, I can't see 62% holding up in November.